


colour

by candycity



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, F/M, What else is new, rivetra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 21:34:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1580339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candycity/pseuds/candycity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>once upon a time, they say, everyone was born into colour. </p>
<p>this is not that world. </p>
<p>[au: everything is black and white until they find their soulmate, after which their world turns into colour. </p>
<p>rivetra; oneshot.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	colour

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on [tumblr](http://ninetypercentsweet.tumblr.com/post/84812436570/colour).  
> based on [this.](http://apharthurkirklands.tumblr.com/post/83699126169/apharthurkirklands-au-where-everything-is-black)

* * *

**

They tell him stories of colour.

Once upon a time, they murmur in hushed voices, weathered bodies leaning over battered wooden tables; once upon a time, everyone was born into colour.

Back then, everyone could see from birth the shades of the rainbow: colours warm as stifling summer heat, ice-cold as the glaciers of the far-off North; colours that reflect the towering trees of the jungle, and the vines that wind their way onto peeling bark, and the delicate flowers that dance in the frosted-glass windows of the florist’s.

They tell him stories of how they found colour despite being born into worlds of black and white: of hands that brushed while passing each other on the street, of eyes that met on a beautiful spring morning, of how she smiled and he laughed and they both lived happily ever after.

( They don’t tell him the other stories, though, and he pretends he doesn’t see the figures skulking in the shadows, listening to the fairy-tales with blank, empty eyes. )

**

By the time he’s eighteen, he’s a soldier in the Recon Corps and rising fast in the ranks. His days are spent flying through the air, spinning with a dancer’s grace and slicing with an assassin’s cruelty.

Humans like grace and cruelty, and it is not very long before medals of recognition accumulate in his bottom drawer and his pockets grow heavier with gold.They applaud him when they see him riding through the streets, fresh from the Outside, cheer for the blood that seeps from his bandages and that congeals underneath his fingernails.

He is caught in a colourless whirlwind of grey blood and grey death and grey brutality, and he no longer dreams of colour; he no longer dreams at all.

He doesn’t expect it when he calls out an unfamiliar name in the list of new recruits, and when his eyes meet hers his world halts.

"Petra Ral."

Her brown eyes meet his.

"Yes, sir!" she screams in response, hair the colour of the stifling summer-heat shifting in the wind, a tangled mess of sunsets and copper.

She is bright, and she is vibrant, and she is beautiful, colourful. His eyes drink in her sheer _colour_  -- her eyes like warm honey, skin fresh as spring rain -- like a man dying of thirst, and his eyes hurt like someone has shone a flashlight straight into his pupils but he _can't look away._  

He finds his voice.

"Ral,” he orders, “do something about your hair.” Her eyes widen, her pale hand flies to her neck. 

It's too much. The sky bears down on him, mercilessly, dizzyingly bright. He closes his eyes, clothes suffocatingly hot and sweat marching down his arms and neck.

“Hanji,” he says, abruptly, “cover for me. I’m not feeling so good.”

She blinks, and then shrugs.

“Sure, Levi. But are you sure you’re —” He doesn’t stop to listen, just turns around and strides off into the woods.

The image of those eyes, wide with surprise and warm and bright and infinitely deep, is burned into his mind.

**

He spends the next few days on sick leave, getting himself re-acquainted with the world.

He finds himself a book of colours: the colour of the wild, it tells him, is green and brown. The ocean and the sky is blue. Fire and blood is red.

He spends hours, standing in the middle of the woods, breathing in the scent of the world with his eyes closed. And then he opens his eyes, and he is, as always, momentarily disoriented by the sheer _colour_ of everything; and then the words flow from his lips. A patch of flowers that blooms sunshine-yellow and rose. The Recon Corps logo: solid blue and white. He finds a small square of red-brown that resembles Petra Ral’s hair, that the book calls _auburn_. 

The square does not catch the light like her hair did, does not shine with all the colours of the sunset: red, orange, gold.  _Auburn_ is too plain, too ordinary for the girl who transformed his world into blazing colour.

He shuts the book, the audible smack drowned out by the incessant birdsong.

"Shut up," he says irritably.

( He’s not sure who he’s talking to. He’s not sure he wants to know. )

**

When he finally returns to work, he goes out of his way to avoid her — although not before noticing, wih a dull ache in his chest, that her long, tangled hair has been trimmed to shoulder length.

It’s not difficult; she is just one recruit among the hundreds, after all. But his stupid brain refuses to stop marvelling at the new world that Petra Ral has given to him, and every time he comes across a shade of blue he’s never seen before, or a particularly vibrant sunrise, his thoughts go straight to Petra _Fucking_ Ral.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few colours that are new to him, and as a result the red-haired recruit s almost constantly on his mind. He’s considering the way she brushes her hair behind her ear when Hanji plonks a tray on the table, settling comfortably opposite him and observing him with veiled amusement as he struggles to keep the heat from flooding his cheeks.

"You all right, Levi?" she asks casually, but her eyes are sharp and inquisitive. "There’s something, I don’t know, _different_ about the way you’ve been looking at things lately.”

"Shut up and eat, Hanji," he responds, rolling his eyes.

( How is he supposed to tell her that she’s exactly right? )

**

Petra Ral turns out to be quite a soldier.

When Erwin rises to office two months later, he immediately promotes Levi to leader of the Special Ops team.

( "The fuck is that?" Levi asked, somewhat warily.

Erwin just smiled. “You’ll see.” )

When he saw the name Petra Ral on the list of his new subordinates, he’d almost refused the post. Eventually, though, he’d given in, because what was he supposed to say?

A scene plays out in his mind, of him trying to explain himself to Erwin. _See, there's this recruit, and I think she's supposed to be my soulmate or some shit, and so I'm going through hell trying to avoid her, because fuck you, common sense._

He smiles wryly at the thought. She’s just a kid, he reasons. Just a kid. It’s no big deal.

**

Just a kid she may be, but it takes almost a year before he can look her in the eye. He catches her staring in his direction more than a few times, only for her to immediately turn away, blushing bright red.

It isn’t an uncommon occurence, especially among the younger recruits; but for some reason he feels a strange stirring in his chest.

( “I’m Petra Ral,” she introduces herself, nearly half a year after she’d been posted to his squad.

"I know," he replies, and then spins around and practically jogs in the opposite direction, almost crashing into a bemused Hanji, who, to her credit, doesn’t question his apparent aversion to redheaded, honey-eyed soldiers. )

**

Their first real conversation comes about shortly after she receives a letter from home.

She bursts into tears right after reading the letter, and Levi is so caught off guard he actually asks, “What happened?”

"My sister," she sobs, and his heart sinks, bracing itself for the worst; "she’s getting _married_.”

He blinks. "Isn’t — isn’t that good news?" he asks, cautiously.

"Of course it is," she cries. "I’m so _happy_ for her; she thought she’d never find colour.”

"Have you?" he asks, before he can stop himself. She momentarily stops crying, and her cheeks flood with colour.

"Yes," she mutters finally, "years ago."

All he manages after that is a soft ' _oh_ '.

( And for the first time in more than a year, he feels so very _grey_. )

**

They become, gradually, from acquaintances, to friends, to each other’s confidantes.

She invites him to her sister’s wedding, and he refuses: “I’m not good with happy occasions,” he admits, and he thinks he sees a trace of sympathy in her eyes; he tells her about his childhood, travelling from town to town with his mother, listening to stories at local taverns every night, and - after his mother died - turning to the shadowed alleys of Sina for comfort.

He skips out on the blood; he doesn’t want her to look at him _that_ way.

She asks him to tell her the stories. “What were they about?” she presses him.

"Colour," he says, and she blushes and doesn’t say anything more.

**

They get drunk one night on the rooftop, staring at the stars and breathing in the cool, sweet night air.

"You know," she says, words slurred slightly, "I like you." She laughs, like she’d just cracked a huge joke.

"You already have colour, though," he tells her, matter-of-factly.

She laughs again."Years ago," she begins to say, "I was maybe - fifteen? and watching the p-p — _procession._ ” She stumbles over her words, her sentences are stilted and jumbled.

He doesn’t say anything. She continues.

"And then, I saw a boy, riding one of the horses. Black hair, dark eyes, pale as _fuck_.” Her voice is like broken glass, and his gaze snaps up to catch hers; she never curses, and she doesn’t sound like Petra Ral at all.

She stares into the night, not meeting his eyes, hers glittering with tears and flecked with a million constellations. She laughs again, the sound harsh and bitter.

“He didn’t look like much, but the second I saw him — my world exploded into colour. My eyes hurt so much and by the time I’d recovered he was gone.”

He can’t breathe, can’t speak. She turns to him, looks him straight in the eye. "You were that boy, Levi. " It sounds almost like an accusation. "You were my colour. But you —" She stops talking, and laughs again.

"Colour," she says, and it’s almost like she’s talking to herself; "they told me it would happen to both people. It was supposed to be a two way thing. But you — _you_ —”

"Petra," he says, and his voice sounds strange, alien, even to his own ears.

"Wha -" He doesn’t wait for a response, just leans in and presses his lips to hers. When they part, her eyes are closed, her lips are parted slightly and her cheeks flushed with inebriation and more.

He leans forward so his forehead touches hers, so he can feel her lifeblood pulsing in her veins. She is warm, alive, battered and beaten and very nearly broken, and in that moment he thinks he could never bear to see her leave.

"Petra, look at me." She opens her eyes, her fragmented gaze still warm and unfaltering.

"You were my colour, too," he whispers.

 **

He wakes up to a pounding in his head and an strange lightness in his heart.

"Hey," a voice comes from beside him. Petra Ral smiles at him, sunset hair threaded with gold, eyes brimming with colour and amusement.

"Hey," he replies, his own voice scratchy and hoarse. He winces and she smirks.

The world, it seems, has never been brighter.

Later, at breakfast, Hanji, following his line of sight, comments, “So. Petra Ral, huh.”

He starts. “What — how?”

Hanji smirks. “You suck at hiding how you feel, Levi.”

And then; “That look on your face says you think the sun shines out of her ass.”

He spends the rest of the morning trying to impale her with a fork.

**

They talk about marriage, but he keeps putting off the proposal.

"Hey," she murmurs into his ear one night, her limbs draped carelessly across the bed - his bed, thank you very much - "d’you think you would ever want to get married?"

He blinks, and tries to untangle himself from the sheets.

“Marriage?” he asks. “I don’t know. It just seems so…” He doesn’t have to finish his sentence, but she knows him too well.

When she responds, her tone is too wistful. “Maybe someday.”

"Someday," he agrees, but the thought lingers, rising from the back of his mind every time they encounter blood.

Soldiers never live very long.

One more expedition, he tells himself, every time. One more expedition, he tells himself, even as the lines around her eyes grow deeper and the brightness of her smile begins to dim. _One more expedition._

He has the ring in his back pocket and her smile playing out in his mind when, suddenly, a blinding streak of lightning flashes jagged across the sky.

When it subsides, the sky has been drained of colour, clouds hanging low and ominous in a black sky.

In another world, it could've been simply the foreshadowing of a storm; but this is not that world.

This world is far crueller.

( It almost makes it easier, seeing her lie lifeless and grey on the colourless ground. )

**

Once upon a time, everyone was born into worlds of colour.

( But this isn’t a fairy-tale, and happily-ever-afters don’t

fucking 

exist. ) 

** 

end.


End file.
